Nova
Nova is a long-ranged sniper. She excels at taking out strong enemies including bosses, and can easily handle most defensive structures. However, until the mid-late game she is extremely inefficient at handling large groups of weak units like Zerglings and Roaches, and is extremely vulnerable to direct attack. Spells Strafe Very early on, often even at level 0, Nova can unlock Heavy Barrel, increasing her range from 5.5 to 7.5, allowing her to outrange Spine Crawlers. This combined with her high base attack damage makes her good at pushing through Zerg structures. However, her base attack speed of 2.5 (improved to 1.95 by the Unobtanium Bolters Talent) makes her extremely inefficient at fending of groups of Roaches. The answer to hordes is Strafe, which gives 4 seconds of 500% increased attack speed, roughly 10 shots, at the cost of 20% attack damage and 50% move speed. However, even this has limited usefulness early on with its base cooldown of 60 seconds. However, with the Havoc Talent and Lightweight Equipment Mastery this can be reduced to 6 seconds, and becomes a vital component of Nova's mid and late-game damage output. Critical Hit Once learned, Nova has a chance (25%, improvable to 53%) with every basic attack to critically hit, dealing bonus damage. While the bonus from a single crit may seem small, with Headhunter Mastery and Strafe, Nova can deal astounding amounts of damage in short spans of time. Additionally, when fully stacked, Headhunter Mastery causes Nova to recover energy when critical hits are scored, which can overcome Strafe's energy costs to make it infinitely sustainable. Snipe Snipe allows Nova to fire single long-range shots, usually at large enemies, at the cost of energy. With Stay On Target and Lightweight Equipment Mastery, Snipe's initial 20 second cooldown can be reduced to literally 0 seconds, with Ghost Academy Mastery its cast time can be reduced from 1 second to 0.5, and with Marksman Mastery and the Ballistic Scope Talent, its cast (and autocast) range can be extended to an enormous 23. Constant sniping is extremely energy-consuming, but as Snipe does increased damage to Massive enemies on its own, and can be upgraded to deal bonus damage to Psionic and Heroic units, it can be used to very quickly chip away at bosses and Ultralisks. Combat Drones Combat Drones are small attack craft that float above Nova and fly out to attack her primary target. Initially they have low damage (2 attacks of 10 damage each hit) and a 2-second attack speed, but their damage scales with Nova's level (+0.1 damage per shot per level), and through Drone War and Drone Hangar Mastery their attack speed can be improved to 1 second. Additionally, while initially only one drone can be fielded, Talents and Drone Hangar Mastery can increase this to 4 Drones. All active Drones will target the same enemy if they can. Additionally, as they count as flying units, they can fly up cliffs to engage enemies and provide a small circle of high-ground vision that can be used to attack additional enemies after their original target is destroyed. In the late game, their high attack speed makes them into an effective answer to swarms of weak enemies such as Banelings, and a way of slowly burning down large enemies like Brutalisks while running from them. However, one limit to their utility is that they only pick up targets when Nova is actively autoattacking; repeatedly casting or autocasting Snipe causes them to lose focus and fly back to Nova. (Also, awkwardly, they have a tendency to cause Nova's attack animations to glitch out, making her dance in stead of standing with her rifle shouldered.) Combat Drones are untargetable and immune to all damage, however they will be destroyed if Nova is lifted up from a Hybrid Dominator's Graviton Prison. You will then need to redeploy the Drones manually. Displace For survivability, Nova has the second lowest base hitpoints of all heroes, second only to Tassadar. However, while Tassadar starts with Shields, Nova does not. The Personal Shields Talent should be taken as soon as possible to make up for this. Additionally, Nova cannot learn Adaptive Armor or most other armor-boosting Talents. To compensate for this, Nova in stead has the Displace ability, making her invulnerable and invisible for a few seconds. It has a long cooldown, but it is an excellent spell for escaping danger, and if used correctly can make Nova extremely difficult to kill. Correct usage of Displace may involve running back towards CP forces or structures, but can also include simply running sideways to escape vision range of incoming EC forces. While this sideways movement may trap you behind enemy lines, it can vastly extend your life expectancy, as if you simply cloak and run towards the CP base, the EC forces chasing you will also be running towards the CP base, and when your cloak runs out they will quite happily kill you. Key Talents Masteries Example Hellwalker Mastery / perk Order More Balanced approaches: # Bug Zapper - Take this. You're forced to take weaponsmith mastery with it later on. # Air Support - Decent early game push. Later almost useless. # Absorption - Required for any snipe based build. Take it. # Compartmentalization - For timing issues you want to take either this or weaponsmith mastery. This one suites snipe builds better. # Leadership - decent damage boost if you really dont care that much about timing. Just buffs Drone's and Air Support Perk. # Weaponsmith - Timing issues for non snipe builds. Mastery: # Drone Hangar - Best early game push. However, you delay your sniping abilities. Recommend not to take this in random games. # Killer Instinct - Energy Regenation. Must have. # Lightweight Equipment Mastery - Required for Strafe and Snipe. # Ghost Academy Training - Faster sniping. You do take this early on to snipe big air units pretty fast. Apart from those guys you try to keep your energy close to maximum while spamming Strafe on cool down. Helps a lot against Flesheater, too. # Marksman - basically just snipe range. # Shadow Walker - Your Score mastery. You want to get this one with the mastery point from level 40. Compartmentalization or Weaponsmith perk helps to get the other useful stuff before level 40. # Weapons Research Mastery - Decent increase in damage. Range increase makes it possible to out-range Yagda's detection and to buff Bug Zapper's range to your autoattack range. # Big Game Hunter - increase vs Armored. # Weak Spot - Basically just useful vs Behemoth if you plan to Strafe it. # Nuke Mastery - Necessary on level 70 or 80 depending on what you plan to do # Energy Mastery - depending on how you play you want this before Nuke or even instead of Weak spot Mastery. Generally, it does help a lot if you take the compartmentalization perk early on to be ready in time. Below is an example of a snipe Build. Recommended for Beginners in groups. It does not perform decent in solo. 'Perks: '''Absorption, Compartmentalization, Bug Zapper, Weaponsmith '''Masteries: ' # Killer Instinct # Lightweight Equipment # Energy # Marksman # Ghost Academy Training # Shadow Walker # Iron Man # Nuke # Drone Hangar # Weakspot # Big Game Hunter